Amsterdam

Hello there my lovelies.........

I already wrote an entry, but I feel like writing again.

It's cold, and I am not in the mood to be doing anything. I don't feel like talking on the phone, nor going out. So, I am here caged up in my room.

And I am fantasizing. I really wish I could take a short trip. I would really like to visit Amsterdam. Really, really bad. I want to see: The Anne Frank House, The Van Gough Museum, the canal, the windmills, the tulips, the Sex Museum and the red light district. My parents read my journal, so they are probably freaking out about me wanting to walk through the Red Light District, haha.

If I had to chose only one place to visit in Amsterdam, it would be the Anne Frank House, hands down. I studied her in school, and read her book twice. While I was at Mathausen, I bought her book and read it on the train. I felt that I could identify with her as a young woman in so many ways.

I would also really like to go to Poland to see Auschwitz. I know that I went to Mathausen during the summer of 2005, (You can read about it in my entry), but I felt like that was only a small percentage of the horror. Auchwitz was the ultimate death factory, and it is a very important part of Holocaust history. My late grandfather's girlfriend and another family friend spent a couple of years there, and I would like to get a better understanding of what they went through. But most of all, you see why tolerance is so important, and what hate can do.

My mother's side of the family is Austrian, but they were Catholics. During the war they had to live in fear, but luckily no one was deported to the camps. Unfortunately many people here in the US are ignorant and automatically assume we were part of Hitler's plan. What's worse, is when I explain that my family was against Hitler and that they were forced to fight, most responses are "yeah, right." People here think it's funny to bring out the Hitler jokes or make Nazi gestures. It doesn't necessarily make my blood boil because I know they aren't accusing me of supporting the Holocaust, but it does get under my skin that people don't have a clue that they're being rude. Very rude.

My great grandparents on my father's side were Russian-Jewish immigrants and immigrated in the early 1900s to the United States to work. I wonder if they immigrated to escape religious persecution. They came through Ellis Island, and I want to visit that place so very badly. I started reading about it in middle school and it fascinated me. And that fascination still hasn't gone away.

Anyway, that's all for now. I'm gonna go and look up cheap air fares. Ciao.